Grover Cleveland’s Columbian Exposition Keepsake

We conclude a trio of stories this week about President Grover Cleveland’s visit to the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago with a newspaper report about a handsome Columbian Exposition keepsake.

The following tidbit about Opening Day of the Columbian Exposition on May 1, 1893, comes from “The Great Fair Opens” in the June 1893 issue of Current Literature [public domain]. Bibliophiles may wonder where this handsome volume is today!

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President Cleveland, says the Chicago Record, carried away with him a unique gift from Director-General Davis. It was a de-luxe copy of the Exposition catalogue, and it was noteworthy in several regards. It was the finest specimen of printing and binding that Chicago book-making art could produce, and it marked the first time in the history of the expositions that a catalogue has been offered amid the press of the opening day. The volume presented to the chief magistrate was one of a special edition of twenty-five printed for presentation to the distinguished guests. It was bound in Turkey levant morocco leather, hand-tooled front and back, and bore the inscription on its front cover:

His Excellency Grover Cleveland,
President of the United States of
America.

The inside covers were finished in inlaid colored leather, the front leaf being the official seal of the Exposition and the fly leaf the publishers’ presentation address. Eight hundred pages of super-calendered paper formed the body of the volume.